


and i'm done with my graceless heart (tonight i'm gonna cut it out and then restart)

by saintsurvivor



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Drama, Friends to Lovers, Gen, Insecure!Jim, Insecurity, M/M, Metaphors, Pre-Slash, Slash, Tarsus IV, Vulnerability, vulnerable!Jim
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-03
Updated: 2014-04-03
Packaged: 2018-01-18 01:48:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1410484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saintsurvivor/pseuds/saintsurvivor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim Kirk cut out his heart and placed it in a box on a shelf where no one could touch it. Until he meets Leonard McCoy.</p><p> </p><p>  <em>“Keep my heart?” He says, cradling the organ in blood sticky fingers.</em></p><p>  <em>Len looks up, and smiles. “Keep your heart,” He says, and closes fingers over Jims hands, pulling Jim close to press a kiss to his cheek. “And let me have all of you,”</em></p><p>  <em>Jim cuts his heart out of his box and places it in his chest.</em></p><p>  <em>His skin stretches as his life begins anew.</em></p><p>  <em>It feels like coming home.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	and i'm done with my graceless heart (tonight i'm gonna cut it out and then restart)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [touchinghearts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/touchinghearts/gifts).



> Okay, so this is really metaphor heavy and totally dedicated to touchinghearts (fantasticalmemories) because they're awesome and I totally needed to write something and I was trolling their blog and they're just so wonderful i wrote something for them.

**and i’m done with my graceless heart (tonight i’m gonna cut it out and then restart)**

Jim Kirk cut out his heart and placed it in a box on a shelf where no one could touch it. Until he meets Leonard McCoy.

your heart, your heart understands mine

**15.**

 

Jim cuts his heart out and places it in a box on a shelf where no one can touch it.

It’s battered, his heart. It’s broken and bleeding and it throbs with the pain that Jim can no longer feel as he wraps chains around it and refuses to let it see the light of day. It’s delicate, fragile and Jim doesn’t want to see it broken, kicked to the floor with dirt and dust smothering it, slowly killing it with their unusual cruelty. He keeps it hidden, locked away in a box on a shelf and it’s protected.

He feels numb, cold and chilly even as the sun shines down on him and warms his flesh. His head is empty and yet so strangely full, emotions a strange concept even as his heart weeps at his pain. He carries it around with him, like an albatross that he hangs around his neck and lets the world see that he is not hurt, he is not human – he has cut his own heart out and placed it in a box on a shelf around his neck and it feels like a hollow victory as he stares up, bloody and grinning even as he feels no pain, at the man who has just beat him.

He has no heart and he feels no pain.

 

**14.**

He packs it in a leather jacket that he wears when on a bike to which he gives to a random stranger at the Riverside Dockyard.

His heart throbs against his hollow chest and it feels like a scar, something poisonous and infectious that fetters inside his torso and curves alongside his ribs and makes a noose out of veins that grip his neck and tighten them so he can’t breathe and his lips turn blue.

“Four years?” He says, and Christopher Pike looks at him. Jim knows he has his heart, Captain Pikes’ heart is battered but whole, bleeding but healing and it makes his heart weep, yearning for a peace of mind Jim knows he won’t be able to ever find when he is on the earth, when he is connected to the flowers and the trees and the oxygen that keeps him breathing even when he doesn’t want to. He wants the stars and the sun and the skies, he wants space and the planets, he wants to feel weightless and the oxygen removed from his veins. He wants to feel alive. “I’ll do it in three,”

It’s a promise.

He raises his head to the skies and smiles.

“I’m coming home,” He says, and the sun burns brightly for her son, as he sits on a shuttle when he just wants to stretch his wings and fling himself towards Mother Sun and Mother Moon, who look down at this creature who keeps his heart in a box on a shelf and never lets anyone see it.

 

**13.**

 

He sits next to a man who has too much heart where he has too little.

“McCoy,” The man says, raising a flask that has scars and memories and it feels a little like a heart to Jim, who swigs from it and doesn’t realise he’s just drank a little bit of this man’s soul, who looks at him so hurt and so intently but with so much confidence and so much anger for one so broken. “Leonard McCoy,”

“Jim Kirk,” He says, and his heart thumps, loud and clear and it tries to reach Leonard McCoy, who smells too much of whiskey and too little of love. Jim wonders if he has a heart.

But surely he has; Leonard McCoy feels too keenly, too painfully and Jim is suddenly remembered of why he cut his own heart out and placed it in a box on a shelf where no one could touch it.

“ _All I’ve got left is my bones_ ,” Leonard McCoy says, and Jim smiles, bright and starry because surely Leonard McCoy is a familiar acquaintance who whom the loss of heart is so familiar with.

But someone else has ripped out Leonard McCoy’s heart, and the loss of something feeling like kinship is felt so keenly inside his heart that whilst Jim feels nothing, his heart rips a little more and blood pools in between his ribs and staining his sternum.

 

**12.**

 

Leonard McCoy worms his way into Jim Kirks heart.

It’s a little like a parasite, burrowing beneath his skin and towards the empty cavity in his chest that should house his heart yet only holds bitterness and regret and the longing for the skies and the seas and the stars and the spinning of space around him.

It’s hard and it feels like he’s being pulled into all directions and it makes him want to cry, wants to pitch a fit and _demand_ Len get away from him because Jim kirk is a supernova of the brightest degree and everyone knows that the brightest always burn the fastest and the hardest and he doesn’t want to this man who is just gaining his heart to be burnt out by Jims undeserving heart that smoulders and cracks in a box on a shelf that no one can touch.

Leonard McCoy worms his way into Jim Kirks heart and Jim Kirk wishes he could give something to this beautiful man who feels too much and has too little but Jim is flying to the sun and the stars and the moon with wings made out of broken bones and bleeding hearts.

All Leonard McCoy has left is his bones and Jim doesn’t want to be the one that disintegrates them.

 

**11.**

 

There is one thing that Jim Kirk will never forget.

People carve you inside, they carve you into who _they_ want you to be and they will do in cruel, unimaginable ways that will leave you battered and cold on the floor, raped and beaten and crying as your heart weeps for your loss even as your body mends and your mind is untouched. People are cold and cruel, the very best of humanity and it feels like a lesson in love that Jim Kirk finds out too early in his too-young life, he feels it in unforgiving bruises pressed to unforgiving flesh and the truth of abuse and pain as it held him down and refused to let him eat as children died around him on a wasteland he wasn’t supposed to be on.

But as he watches Leonard McCoy, who all he has left is his bones, Jim suddenly realises that Leonard is slowly regaining his heart, in bits and pieces that are tattered and little bits and pieces missing that make a misshaped heart that thumps and beats as it regrows inside his chest like a flower grows towards the sun and it _burns_ , it hurts his heart like a brand pressed to his skin that he can’t see as the constellations grow around him, pressing stars and scars into his flesh as the moons revolve around his breaking heart, and he wishes his sternum would continue to break as his ribs dig graves into his muscles and his chest cavity as his empty heart threatens to consume the whole planet in it’s orbit as he realises that Leonard McCoy is gaining back his heart and there is nothing that Jim has done to help him.

Leonard McCoy is gaining his heart back and Jim still keeps his cut out heart in a box on a shelf where no one can touch it.

 

**10.**

 

His heart is slowly coming together.

He stares down at the box, and wonders what could have happened. He touches it with trembling finger, and feels the touch of his own flesh and doubles over because it feels like the sun has just been ignited inside him, fearsome and bright and just like that stars that shine down upon him.

He traces the name _Leonard McCoy_ burned into the thumping flesh and can’t help feeling the shameful guilt and fear of having saddling the doctor with his demons and issues.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, and it’s an apology and love in one.

He cuts his own heart out again and places it in a box on a shelf where no one can touch it.

Not even Leonard McCoy.

 

**9.**

 

Len grips him by the wrist and tugs him to him.

“Let me help,” he insists, and it’s low and gravelly, pained and wanting all in the same tone and it makes Jims heart thump loudly as a tear slowly mends with Lens gentle fingers and steady hands.

“No one can help,” Jim says, tugging his arm back. Len doesn’t let go.

“Because you don’t let them,” He says and releases Jim, letting go of his body but keeping his heart tucked between the graves of his ribs and the flowers of his sternum.

Jim stands, staring back at Len who keeps his own heart tucked into his chest cavity, bleeding and weeping but whole and undusted and he can’t help but want to bury himself into the doctor, feel the doctor wrapped all around him and holding him tightly.

He wants his heart.

 

**8.**

 

Jim checks his heart placed in a box on a shelf where no one can touch it to make sure.

It’s no longer broken, but weeping gentle tears that scream of want and love as the scars slowly mend.

He throws it away from him and tries not to think.

He has no heart and he feels no pain.

(It’s a lie)

 

**7.**

 

The _Kobayashi Maru_ tears his heart and soul apart.

He curls under his duvet, clutching his heart close to him and wonders if that was how his father felt when he realised he was about to die. How his stomach had hollowed and how his breath had been sparse.

He clenches his eyes shut against the image that should be the grey wall and tries not to let the burning of his eyes distract him.

Somebody slips in behind him, and they hold him in their arms, tight and loving and it makes Jim bite his lip to stop crying.

A hand runs through his damp hair.

“You are not your father,” he is told and he leans back against Lens chest. “You are so much more,”

He turns around, his heart clutched to his chest, and presses close to Len.

It feels like starlight.

 

**6.**

 

“Sometimes,” Jim says, slow and hesitant as Len holds him tightly. “Sometimes I want to fly, fly so high, and just disappear,”

Len smiles against the back of his neck. “You’re always flying,” He says, slow and sweet as his accent warps the words. “You’re always flying because you’re always in the sky,”

“Bones?” He asks, and turns around.

“You’re the sky,” Len says, brushing Jims hair away from his face. “And the sun is your heart whilst space is your home,

He laughs breathless and it feels a little like going crying.

 

**5.**

 

“Bones?”

“Yeah darlin’?”

“Don’t ever leave me,”

“Never,”

 

**4.**

“I’m afraid of the darkness of my heart,” he whispers into the night.

Len turns around, and pulls Jim to his chest and curves around him, holding his empty chest and kissing his tears.

“Be yourself,” he says. “And you’ll never have to be afraid again,”

“What if I can’t?”

“Then stay with me, for nothing will harm you, not when I’m around,”

Forever feels a little like now.

 

**3.**

His heart thumps and scars begin to scab.

 

**2.**

“Keep my heart?” He says, cradling the organ in blood sticky fingers.

Len looks up, and smiles. “Keep your heart,” He says, and closes fingers over Jims hands, pulling Jim close to press a kiss to his cheek. “And let me have all of you,”

Jim cuts his heart out of his box and places it in his chest.

His skin stretches as his life begins anew.

It feels like coming home.

 

**1.**

 

“I could start fires with how I feel about you,”

“Oh darlin’, I could destroy the universe with how much I need you,”

 

**0.**

 

“You are more than your heart,” ( _“I love you,”)_

“And you are more than your bones,” ( _“I love you, too,”_ )

 

 

(it’s more than an admission of love, it’s an admission of trust and hurt and rage and anger, of togetherness, of _heart_ and of _bone_ )


End file.
